Old Post Office (Albany, New York)
Encyclopedia
Old Post Office, also known as the United States Government Building, is a historic post office
building located at Albany
, Albany County, New York
, United States
. It was built from 1879 to 1883 at a cost of $627,148. It has a three story central section with four and five story corner towers. It is built of granite
and is a rectangular shaped building with a central light well. It features slate
covered mansard roof
s crowned by iron balustrades
along the ridges. The main entrance is framed by a group of stone columns and pilasters. Postal operations moved to larger facilities prior to 1972, but the building continued to house federal government offices.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 1972.
Post office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
building located at Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
, Albany County, New York
Albany County, New York
Albany County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York, and is part of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Metropolitan Statistical Area. The name is from the title of the Duke of York and Albany, who became James II of England . As of the 2010 census, the population was 304,204...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It was built from 1879 to 1883 at a cost of $627,148. It has a three story central section with four and five story corner towers. It is built of granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
and is a rectangular shaped building with a central light well. It features slate
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
covered mansard roof
Mansard roof
A mansard or mansard roof is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterized by two slopes on each of its sides with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper that is punctured by dormer windows. The roof creates an additional floor of habitable space, such as a garret...
s crowned by iron balustrades
Baluster
A baluster is a moulded shaft, square or of lathe-turned form, one of various forms of spindle in woodwork, made of stone or wood and sometimes of metal, standing on a unifying footing, and supporting the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a staircase. Multiplied in this way, they form a...
along the ridges. The main entrance is framed by a group of stone columns and pilasters. Postal operations moved to larger facilities prior to 1972, but the building continued to house federal government offices.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places listings in Albany, New York
The National Register of Historic Places listings in Albany, New York represent the history of Albany from the Dutch colonial era, through the British colonial era, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and World War II, in addition to various periods of immigration into New York's...
in 1972.